On GPS this week, a memo to the president. Fareed convenes a panel of two former White House chiefs of staff and a man who has advised four U.S. presidents to answer this question: how should Obama craft a successful second term? John Podesta, Ken Duberstein, and David Gergen offer their take.

Also on the show, “big data” and the election. GPS looks at what campaigns know about you and how they use that information. New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg explains.

“[T]he ocean level has risen in the eastern seaboard by almost a foot during the past century,” Sachs says. “And that means that storm surges are all the more extreme. The flooding, which was so destructive, is made worse by that. And the ocean surface to sea level keeps rising.

“And it’s rising because of the glaciers melting, the ice sheets thinning. And the risks of massive increase of ocean levels are very, very real. So that’s one very clear part of human-induced, long-term climate change during the past century.”

soundoff(10 Responses)

AK Sask

Election reform: for every $10 (pick a number), $1 must go to Election USA, a non-partisan organization created to manage elections in each state. Rather than all the super PAC money going to annoying robo calls and advertising, for the sake of democracy, mandate that a portion must go to supporting a truly democratic election.

Mr Zakaria, I love your program. Advise to my president !Promote this hike tax to the wealthy as a PATRIOtC TAX in which the wealthier will help the country away from the financial abyss. The government will hold this tax for four to six years until we will get TAX REFORM. Meanwhile government will reward by tax cuts for one thousand jobs created. Just an advise

The GOP' defeat this past election should start a deeply evaluation of its policies and mostly it's own purpose. The election not only showed the will of the people but have forced the GOP to examination it's purpose and responsibility towards the nation. Evaluations on it have indicated that GOP have moved toward the extreme right and became narrow minded on its views. Too white, too conservative, too insensitive toward social and fiscal issues. We hope that GOP will be able to work with the Congress in solving the monumental challenges we face as a nation.

Re extreme events and climate – it is long past time that you and CNN, Time,and the Washington Post did some real objective due diligence and looked at the basic data instead of simply requoting propagandists for AGW such as Sachs and the IPCC.Real empirical data show the following. There has been no net warming for 15 years with CO2 up 8.5%. The warming trend stopped in about 2003 – since then earth has been in a cooling trend,The phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation suggests we are entering a 30 year cooling trend and the unprecented decline in solar magnetic field strength since 2005 suggests the possibility of a coming Maunder Minimum or little ice age. On a cooling earth the jet stream has a much more Meridional component.This brings cold weather further south and warmer weather further north. It is the sharp temperature gradient across these air masses which causes extreme conditions. The real climate signal in Sandy was the accompanying blizzard.A cooler world will see more droughts, more blocking highs,more tornadoes, and more Sandy type hurricanes due to this natural variability. Food production will be hurt by drought, early and late frosts and shorter growing seasons. Controlling CO2 emissions is irrelevant to these climate changes.There is no empirical evidence tying anthrpogenic CO2 to climate change.Unless we get the science right we will make things worse. Clearly earth is in transition not to a warmer but to a colder world – we need to look adapt our infrastructure our energy policies accordingly
Fareed if you want to break out of your global warming information bubble contact me by e-mail. or at least read many of the posts at http://www.climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com.

Fareed Zakaria is still one of my favorite journalists. However, his comments that support a national election commission in the United States and the use of biometrics show he may have a lack of understanding of the United States and/or elections. Having worked on elections on four continents, I appreciate a central election commission may prove appropriate in many countries, but not in the United States, as government that is closer to the people proves more effective. My girlfriend was an international election observer for the 2012 US presidential election, and I asked her to make fun of the first person to recommend a central elections commission. I thought it would be an observer from Belarus or Tajikistan, I never thought it would be Fareed Zakaria.

I regard you as the most intelligent and articulate journalist on TV so I have to make this comment because sometimes I think you get caught up in the thoughts of your cohorts and become one of the choir instead of the choirmaster. The President during his campaign for re-election stressed that it is his position that it is necessary to raise taxes on the "wealthy" earning above $250,000 for an individual so that these folks can pay a little bit more to contribute to reducing the dreaded national debt. Your panelists discussed the many ways revenue could be raised even without raising tax rates which is anathema to the House GOP especially the Tea Party representatives. You all chimed in on "raising revenues" by reducing deductions and loopholes and other tax expeditures.

What was missing from the discussion but what is essential to the President's message is that President Obama's idea ot tax reform is also about tax fairness and justice. The fact that a secretary can be paying a higher effective tax rate than a billionaire is blatently unfair. The fact that General Electric may pay nothing in Federal taxes because of tax writeoffs and shelters is unfair. There was no discussion of this issue among your panelists and it was not raised by you yet it is essential that the American taxpayer feels that the tax system is fair and progressive. To reduce the President's concerns to just raising revenue ignores this more essential issue. Republicans never utter the words justice or fairness or equity ( the latter term only in reference to stocks). So if Boehner says his caucus is open to rasing revenues but not raising rates the issue of fairness gets to be ignored and unacknowledged.

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The Global Public Square is where you can make sense of the world every day with insights and explanations from CNN's Fareed Zakaria, leading journalists at CNN, and other international thinkers. Join GPS editor Jason Miks and get informed about global issues, exposed to unique stories, and engaged with diverse and original perspectives.